The Sonos Sub, not to be confused with the Five-Dollar Footlong, is a subwoofer that works wirelessly with the Sonos family of devices and adds considerable bass to any Sonos CONNECT:AMP, PLAY:5, or PLAY:3 device. It is a substantial device with two force-canceling speakers that outputs down to 25 Hz.At $699 this isn’t your run-of-the-mill audio purchase. However, the difference in sound reproduction with and without the Sub is quite striking.I have dual PLAY:5s pumping out audio in my living room and I thought they were more than sufficient for my needs. However, after adding the Sub I noticed a fuller range of sound as the PLAY:5s took over on the high end and Sub was able to add b[...]

Five years ago we started bringing together the best technical minds and�entrepreneurs�in information technology to discuss at Structure how the growing importance of the cloud was changing their worlds. Now, it?s clear the cloud has arrived: but what impact will it continue to make on the hardware, software, and services industries that help businesses across the world continue to reap the benefits of this historic shift?Today and tomorrow at Structure 2012, we?ll host a comprehensive and compelling discussion about these vital issues, bringing together some of the biggest and best companies and executives in the field alongside scrappy startups just waiting to make an impact.Our livestre[...]

With over 700 million downloads, Apple’s iTunes U has been a massive success, but unlike other new online learning services like Udacity or Codecademy, it’s missing a social component where students can ask questions and learn from each other. Apple, Stanford University and the Palo Alto-based startup Piazza have now teamed up to bring Piazza’s social learning platform for students, TAs and professors to the next session of Stanford’s highly popular iOS development class on iTunes U. This is a first for iTunes U and Piazza and Stanford worked closely with Apple to get a link to the course’s Piazza site embedded in iTunes U.As Piazza’s founder and CEO Pooj[...]

Last year investor Peter Thiel surprised a lot of people in the energy sector by calling cleantech investing “a disaster” and saying clean energy innovation has been a failure. However, fast forward about nine months, and Thiel just announced that he’s the largest investor in a new potentially $1 billion growth fund that will back companies across sectors including in energy and those tackling resource constraints.The new fund, which already closed on $402 million, is called Mithril Capital Management after a type of metal described in�J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of Rings. Investors Ajay Royan and Jim O’Neill will help co-manage the fund.Best of luck to them. Ba[...]

The “Taste Graph” is Payvment‘s secret weapon. Facebook’s top ecommerce platform has spent two years finding out�what Facebook users Like and buy, and starting today its 165,000 merchants can use it to auto-target ad campaigns. See many�businesses don’t have know how to A/B test, target, or manage Facebook ad bids, but now�they just set their total budget, and Payvment pre-populates creative from their store, optimizes bids, and show ads to people interested in similar products.The result is ad campaigns that get 25% better click through rates than those bought through Facebook’s self-serve platform. By making Facebook ads easier and more effective for th[...]